Coordinators have long had faith in new Seminoles coach Norvell
New FSU coordinators Adam Fuller and Kenny Dillingham took different paths to joining new Seminoles coach Mike Norvell’s staff.
Both worked for Norvell at Memphis, and Dillingham was an offensive assistant when Norvell was at Arizona State.
Their success with Norvell led him to bring them along as assistant coaches with the Seminoles — Fuller as the defensive coordinator and Dillingham as quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator.
Their interactions with the head coach are reasons they are eager to work for Norvell once again. And the expectation is they will continue the success they had with Norvell at their previous stops.
Fuller, 43, was with Norvell this past season at Memphis. Before that, he was at Marshall from 2013-18. Norvell called Fuller to see if he wanted to join him with the Tigers.
He agreed, and Norvell eventually picked him up at the Memphis airport. It was the first time the two met face-to-face.
Up to that point, they only had phone conversations.
Fuller was already sold on Norvell before the airport meeting.
“I get off the phone the first time I spoke to him, and I told my wife, ‘I want to work with him,’” Fuller said on Monday. “Just, it was more, you know, he is sharing his vision of who he is as a man, basically, right? It wasn’t, you know, ‘This is how you fit A-gap power, right?’ It was more like, ‘This is who I am, this is how I act, this is what I do on Tuesday. What do you do on Tuesday? Well, this is who I am.’ ”
Fuller vastly improved the Tigers’ total defense, passing defense and scoring defense in 2019. Fuller has spoken to current FSU players and told them to be ready to put in work as he will look to turn around yet another program.
“I told the players, as they come up, ‘You don’t have to trust me; you just have to watch us work,’ ” he said.
Dillingham, 29, echoed that statement, and he met Norvell in a contrasting way.
Dillingham began coaching as a high school senior at Chaparral High School in Arizona. A few years later, he attended an Arizona State practice, which is less than 30 minutes away from the high school. Norvell was the offensive coordinator at ASU at the time.
Norvell was making headway as a coach who began to implement run-pass options with the Sun Devils.
Dillingham was nervous about introducing himself. He was 20 or 21 years old at the time. Dillingham eventually mustered enough courage to go and speak to Norvell.
Norvell’s reaction came as a surprise to the young coach.
“He goes, ‘Hey, nice to meet you. If there’s anything I can ever do for you, anything, you want to come up to my office and watch film and sit in quarterback meetings, you can,’” Dillingham recalled on Monday. “Well, little did he know that I was going to sit in every single meeting the rest of spring and be the dude in the corner.
“From right then, I knew this was a special guy. Because I’m a guy who adds zero value to his life, and he extended an olive branch, receiving nothing in return, to let me come up there and sit in those meetings.”
Dillingham eventually joined the Arizona State staff in 2014 as an offensive assistant.
Norvell brought him to Memphis when he was hired there. Norvell was hired at Memphis in 2016, and Dillingham joined him as quarterbacks and tight ends coach. Dillingham was promoted to offensive coordinator in 2018.
During his one season as the Tigers’ offensive coordinator, Memphis broke program records with 7,324 yards of total offense and 3,919 rushing yards. He parlayed that success into a bigger job.
Dillingham spent the 2019 season as Auburn’s offensive coordinator.
And then Norvell called. Dillingham decided to leave another offensive-minded coach in Gus Malzahn to rejoin Norvell, this time in Tallahassee.
In less than a decade, Dillingham has established himself as one of the top young offensive minds in college football.
It began when he decided to introduce himself to Norvell at Arizona State’s practice.
“Right there, I knew that this was a guy that I wanted to attach myself with, this is a guy I wanted to learn from, and this is a guy I wanted to model [myself ] after,” Dillingham said.
“Right there, I knew that this was a guy that I wanted to attach myself with, this is a guy I wanted to learn from, and this is a guy I wanted to model [myself] after.” —Kenny Dillingham on meeting new FSU coach Mike Norvell as an assistant at Arizona State